


Children Born from War, Raised in War

by Rowanmoonlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Child Soldiers, Dumbledore Critical, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Second War with Voldemort, Snape Critical, War, aftermath of war, implied/referenced PTSD, just a little though, written because I thought ‘hey maybe everyone in Hogwarts got a little fucked up’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26051146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowanmoonlight/pseuds/Rowanmoonlight
Summary: This generation of young witches and wizards was born in the end of a war, grew up in the aftermath of one, and lived through their own as teenagers. What was it like for them, listening to the radio list the dead as they ran away from Snatchers or were forced to torture one another? Horrible. This is their war.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Hogwarts Students, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry & Hogwarts Students, Hogwarts Students & Dolores Umbridge, Hogwarts Students & Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	Children Born from War, Raised in War

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for clicking on this story that I wrote in two hours of intense inspiration! This deals with the Hogwarts students in general and most listed characters are just mentioned a couple times. It’s a little dark, obviously, because it’s about the war. A bit Dumbledore and Snape critical but not overly so.  
> Trigger warnings are in the tags and the story is just generally sad.

War in the Wizarding world evolves. It ended, or maybe just paused, years ago on a Halloween night. It starts again in June in a graveyard.

War starts with a “kill the spare” and a flash of green light. From there it becomes a young boy, far too small, struggling to survive as he is tortured and forced to share blood with his parents’ murderer. The first day of war that small boy returns to a field of triumphant music and cheers, clutching the dead body of a boy he maybe could have called a friend if he had more time. The first day of war ends with a cold body on a bed and two grieving parents.

Funny how the roles reversed. The first war ended with an orphaned son and the second started with two parents without a son. In the following years more son and parents are lost. Some are killed, some are tortured, some become soldiers, some become broken beyond repair, and some learn to grow past the war. Some can never leave it behind, it is their childhood. This is war.

-

Students as young as eleven sit confused in Defense classes. They learn only theory and are told Voldemort is not alive, Cedric Diggory’s death was a tragic accident. But those who were there last year cannot forget the screams as Harry Potter returned and refused to let go of a still warm corpse, the wails of Amos Diggory.

Children crowd around newspapers and plaques declaring new rules and banned topics. Teachers may not talk to students outside of class, Cedric Diggory’s name gives you a detention, having your wand on your desk in Defense gets you punishment. There is a mass breakout from Azkaban. Neville Longbottom and Susan Bones talk about relatives not there anymore and the murderers and torturers who escaped. They reassure muggleborn children that they will be okay and wish that the words didn’t feel like lies.

Dozens upon dozens of children, not brave souls, simply kids trying to get an education, walk clutching their hands. They write and write with quills that use no ink, only blood of the innocent. There are scars etched into the backs of hands, never to be removed. Some have one phrase written deep, others have four or five that make their hands more scar than skin. These children are not brave, they are afraid. The teachers can do nothing and those in power continue to harm those who cannot resist.

There are whispers of a secret group that never gets caught. They learn real magic and how to fight, how to remember and honor the dead by making sure their death isn’t a ‘tragic accident’. There is a room filled with child soldiers that don’t feel like children, they cast spells that are innocent at first and then they learn how to sting and burn and break bone as well. There are only so many patronuses you can cast when the whole world is dark. A group of children calls themselves an army and they are abandoned by the Headmaster they are named for. A door is broken down and students are captured. Words are carved into hands.

A small group of students goes missing. So does Umbridge. Nobody is surprised until some say they heard she tried to cast crucio on fifteen year old Harry Potter. Monster though she was, nobody expected that. But she is gone. Defense teachers always leave in one way or another and Potter will always have some dangerous task that requires him to lose what’s left of his childhood. He has not been a child in a very long time. The Headmaster is back and the students are grateful but they do not hold thanks for him. He let them be tortured, left them, and returned when it was safe. He could not stay but they could not leave and they are all just children. Their hands hold scars and their minds whisper that it’s against the rules to talk to adults. 

Voldemort is back but they already knew that. Sirius Black is dead and he is innocent and it is just another mistake by the Ministry. The Ministry says war is coming but it has already been happening. There are students who personally know the use of dittany and how to hold back tears and resentment. There are children with scars outside and in. This is war.

-

There is a new Potions Master and Snape teaches Defense. Students with last names that promise power and grades that hold promise are collected into a group of the elite. Neville Longbottom helps first years through panic attacks after Defense and whispers that he understands. Hogwarts has not been fair in a long time.

Dumbledore keeps leaving and nobody is surprised. He left when he was needed most last year and he left when Harry Potter faced down Voldemort as an eleven year old and when Ginny Weasley nearly died alone except for a memory of a murderer in the Chamber of Secrets. Why would he stay now? Ron Weasley gets poisoned and Katie Bell gets cursed. Susan Bones splinches her leg off and though she screams at first she does not cry, no, she has learned to keep tears at bay while writing lines of blood. There is fear in these old halls and it is not new.

June comes and the students are uneasy. It is the time for Harry Potter’s next dangerous task and nobody wants to know what it will be. But this time they are all involved too and there are death eaters in the castle. Students wake up to screaming and spells flying, they grab their wands and they fight in pajamas using spells that Umbridge never taught and would make Professor not Moody proud.

The dark mark floats above a tower and there is a crumpled body on the stairs. The Hospital Wing has overflowed into the hall. Spells still fly and nobody is safe. A student, just barely twelve years old, is hoisted by their ankle and then dropped over the edge of the moving staircases. Later, whispers claim that Snape invented the spell. The first year survives but they do not return to Hogwarts for the rest of the year.

At the bottom of the tallest tower lays Albus Dumbledore. He is sprawled gracelessly across the grass, looking not at all like the god he was portrayed as. The students who he left behind are upset and mourn the loss but they do not think of him as anything more than a war leader and member of society. He was not their Headmaster, not after that year of blood running down clenched fists when he only watched and claimed inability to act.

There is a funeral and most students attend. Their numbers are dwarfed by the rest of society showing up to see the white tomb. Some think of Cedric Diggory, of that death that of one of their own that had no purpose. They remember that grand mourning speech and somber feast and some of them remember the quiet funeral. Harry Potter was there, sobbing into the ground that held the Hufflepuff boy that wanted to play fair. The crowd was small and Albus Dumbledore only appeared for a brief moment before disappearing. The harsher students can not find it in themselves to forgive him. But he is dead and cannot asked for forgiveness. This is war.

-

A message goes out that muggleborns are to be registered. Attendance at Hogwarts is mandatory for purebloods. The Ministry is simply a puppet for Voldemort and Harry Potter is not there to defeat him this time. 

Dumbledore’s Army is reestablished in halls polished with blood. Some call it the Resistance Army instead, and it fits better on their bloody, grimy faces. Students fight their Death Eater teachers and attend classes where they only learn pain. Crucio is heard more often lumos and they learn to say it too. Learn to control how strong their torture is so that their subjects can escape with their minds intact. They learn how to fake being tortured, even if their screams are still real. 

Radios in Hogwarts and across the country with students in hiding play a single station. The jokes are sad but appreciated before the too long list of the dead and missing. Vigils are held and the Carrows laugh as they knock over candles and pictures.

There is brief news of Harry Potter fleeing snatchers and breaking into Gringotts. It is mostly ignored. Sometimes they feel hope and think he will return but they push it down. It is their fight too and they will not go down easily. There is rubble in the halls and resistance in the classes. Neville Longbottom has more scars than anyone else, taking every curse and hex and jinx meant for others that he can. He whispers about his parents who survived under the cruicatus curse for so long before succumbing to insanity and says that he’s making them proud, making himself proud.

Harry Potter finally returns but he does not fight, he searches for a diadem lost to time and legend. The rest prepare themselves for a fight and begin to take enemies left and right. The adults told them only those of age could fight. The underaged snuck back in right away and cast spells more vicious and effective than those foolish adults. War is not a place for children and there are no children here.

Voldemort offers a deal. Harry Potter for their safety. They know it is a trick and ignore the announcement. But still, they imagine peace. Pansy Parkinson, the scared Slytherin girl who always tried to be gentle with her curses and loved unicorns, tried to make the trade. Her eyes spoke of fear and the insane hope to be left alone. She and the rest of her house were banished to the dungeons. They went, most not wanting to fight parents and friendly older siblings and fun cousins. Some did want to fight them though and they snuck back out to rejoin the fight. They cursed family with glee and a vengeance, for they supported the man who allowed their torture.

The Boy Who Lived died and became the Boy Who Lived Twice, the Man Who Conquered. Voldemort fell and the fighting ended. But the dead did not rise from where they had fallen and the injured still bled. Colin Creevey, just sixteen but not a child, lay in the dust still holding his wand in a defensive position. He was buried by his younger brother and remembered by everyone else as a boy who fought bravely and captured their lives with a camera. Dennis published a book filled with his photos just four months later. Every member of the Resistance Army received a copy.

The war ended. But would it ever truly end for those children forced to grow up among death?

-

These are children born from the end of a war only to be raised into another one. They grew up with parents who went from fighting for their lives to building families within a year. They grew up with not enough relatives at family gatherings and too many adults afraid of the name of a supposedly dead man. Children born from the last war grow up learning to be afraid of the dark but also learning not to rush to their parents’ rooms because when awoken in the night they will curse first with the wands clutched in their sleeping hands and ask questions later.

These children of love brought alive by blood and death go to Hogwarts and think that they will be safe. But they are not. Their stuttering Defense teacher hides the Dark Lord on the back of his head, though they will not learn of this. Harry Potter nearly dies under the school as he burns a man alive trying to keep safe a stone that should be protected by adults. 

The next year they are taught by a fraud and students are attacked left and right. The Headmaster is forced out of the school and Ginny Weasley is missing. Once again Harry Potter nearly dies beneath the school, venom only needing ten more seconds when it is healed by the bird of a man who couldn’t save them. The students are made of fear, huddled in common rooms waiting for teachers to tell them they can go back home where monsters don’t lurk in the halls, just in their parents’ memories.

There is a mass murderer on the loose and monsters that suck out your happy memories and soul surround the castle. The teachers find a little boy at the top of the Astronomy Tower and pull him down safely. Sirius Black breaks in again and again and he is never caught. Professor Lupin teaches them about dangerous creatures and how to cast spells with more power. They feel safe in that classroom with the diagrams and stash of chocolate. June arrives and Sirius Black is caught and an older student swears they hear Harry Potter screaming his innocence. Then he escapes and the dementors leave and the Minister tries to pretend they didn’t almost destroy one student and cause the rest to fear the grounds. They go back home and wake up at night, phantom cold in their dreams.

The dark mark appears at the Quidditch World Cup and the year only gets worse. The older students, the ones born as the first war still raged, think themselves worthy enough to compete. Or maybe they’re just looking for a way to prove it to themselves. Everybody ignores the mentions of the death toll. Cedric Diggory’s name comes out of the goblet of fire and everybody cheers. Harry Potter’s name comes out as well and everybody thinks he cheated but they also fear this may be his last year at Hogwarts. Some of the students sit too close to the dragon during the first tournament, and they don’t know if it’s for the adrenaline of being near something so dangerous or for the possibility of getting hurt. Children cheer as two bodies return from the maze but something is wrong. The cheers die out as Harry Potter screams and Amos Diggory cries. This is not a fun tournament anymore. They remember the warnings of the death toll but it was not the maze that killed Cedric.

Papers call Harry Potter and Dumbledore insane and fools and attention seekers. Students throw the papers away when they have nightmares of a field with a dead body. Some try to cling to what the Ministry says, because that means they don’t have to fear and the nightmares should go away, right? A woman in all pink shows up and Hogwarts is more hell than home. Students ask questions and receive blood ink lines instead of answers. Dumbledore is gone and the students cannot fight back. They bleed and bleed and bleed until their fists are numb from dittany and holding wands too tight. Umbridge leaves, Sirius Black is dead, Dumbledore returns. But he is too late to save his students.

The war is recognized and the gap between the rich and powerful and the weak and poor grows. Slughorn collects students and nobody who gets an invitation can decide if it’s a blessing or a curse. Snape keeps the Defense classroom dark and miserable, where chocolate and a friendly ear or even dueling advice and a warning about vigilance once lay there is only cold and fear. Students stop calling him a bat and start calling him a dementor. Cursed necklaces and poisoned mead make them afraid, but not terribly so. Then there is a battle and they are injured but they feel  _alive_. And isn’t that awful? These students, so used to terror and pain and being ignored, love the feeling of throwing spells at enemies. But they do not love the loss that comes with the battle. They bury Albus Dumbledore and the students mourn but they do not mourn a beloved Headmaster.

Muggleborns are hunted down and registered, wands stolen from them. Attendance to Hogwarts is mandatory for purebloods but Ron Weasley and his friends are missing. The Chosen One has abandoned Hogwarts but these children who live in the fight will not. It may be hell but it is still home, even if it hurts. The halls are graffitied with Dumbledore’s Army messages and some students see a beacon of hope in the name while others scowl at it for leaving them but join the meetings anyway. 

The Carrows teach them how to cast the cruciatus.

Each older student has to cast it upon the younger ones. It is better that way. They cast it as light as they can and teach how to fake screams and heal their others wounds in the common room. There is no resentment here, only gratitude for protection from the Carrows’ deadly curses. Neville Longbottom weaves traps for them, Ginny Weasley hexes them as painfully as she can, Luna Lovegoode sets up elaborate rune traps that shouldn’t work, and Ernie Macmillan guides students through the safest passageways. This is not the Dumbledore’s Army of fifth year, no, this is a true army of soldiers wearing child bodies. They learn vicious hexes and powerful healing charms, how to navigate halls in the dark and avoid ambush, how to resist torture and handle nightmares of being forced to torture their friends.

The students on the run do not even get the luxury of friends. But they should not compare pain, surviving with barely any food in a small tent versus surviving with Death Eaters forcing you to do despicable things under threat of death or torture to another. The students in the forests, in safe houses provided by Percy Weasley, in abandoned muggle properties listen to a crackling radio host. The three giving the news try to make jokes, to bring light, but they also must read the lists of the fallen and disappeared. Huddled by small fires the students listen with morbid curiosity and fearful anticipation as the names are called out. They lose family, and friends, and strangers. War is an ugly, brutal thing and these children were born from the last one and grew up in the second one.

The Battle of Hogwarts, as it is called in the future, let all those bloodied and spiteful students come back. They came from across the country, from every nook in the castle, to fight. They held their wands tightly in a practiced position and ran through hundreds of curses that edge on dark. The adults tell them that this is not a fight for children but they are not children and they have been fighting for years already while adults sat back and watched. They want to scream and rage at these fools telling them to go home to families that are dead and friends that were killed by professors. So the ones who are underage but just as grown up sneak back in and they fight and fight and they win. For Cedric Diggory, the unnecessary death. For Umbridge, who made them carve open their hands. For Dumbledore, who left the school behind again and again until he left permanently. For Snape and the Carrows, who killed and tortured and forced kids to do the same. These students, these children, these soldiers fought with screams in their ears and determination and fear in their hearts.

Harry Potter died for them. He left and sacrificed himself and he came back but he didn’t mean to. Some of the others weren’t so lucky. Their bodies stayed down until they were lifted up by friends and family and laid down in the earth. Voldemort died but the fight in these students did not. They were all offered positions with the aurors and many took them, or became healers. The rest found normal jobs that were away from the remainders of war. But weren’t they the remainders of war?

They woke up screaming and reaching for wands. They flinched at loud noises and drew themselves into dark corners to hide. They screamed at those older than them who thought they knew better the struggles of life and brandished scars of all sizes. The war ended and life went on but fighting still resided in their brains. It was a terrible, awful thing but that was just how it was.

These children were born of war and raised in war and they grew after war. Some tried to bury it, kill it, accept it, but war lived in them. Some feared that they would never escape that feeling of terror and aliveness that came with intense battle. Some craved it. Their blood ran with the memories of death and violence and when they finally made families of their own their children were not born of war. The mistakes of their parents were fixed and not repeated on their own kids. But they could not fix themselves completely, for they all lost something. But they would be okay. They would survive day after day of this normal life so unlike what they grew up in. 

Children born of war and raised in war created peace, and did not let it falter.


End file.
